How mothers talk to their children about failure, mistakes and setbacks is related to their children's fear of failure

Background: Many people fear failure and making mistakes. This fear can be transmitted from parents to children, suggesting that parental communication regarding failures and setbacks may play a critical role in shaping a child's perception of mistakes.

Aims: In this study, we investigated how everyday parent-child conversations about setbacks influence children's fear of making mistakes.

Sample: Drawing on the large pre-birth Growing Up in New Zealand cohort, we focused on a sub-sample of 231 mother-child dyads who engaged in a recorded conversations about a "recent disappointment or setback" when the children were 8 years old.

Method: Conversations between mothers and children about the recent disappointments were coded to identify whether parents recognised or acknowledge their child's emotional response, if action plans were discussed, and the types of resources that the child could draw on. The children also completed a questionnaire about their global self-worth and their fear of making mistakes.

Results and conclusions: The discussion of clear action plans, in the absence of a discussion about collaborative resources, was found to be associated with an increased fear of making mistakes among children. Conversely, when mothers clearly acknowledged their child's emotions and discussed ways to work collaboratively with their child on future problems, there was a notable decrease in the child's fear of mistakes. However, it is noteworthy that many mothers in our study either minimally acknowledged or dismissed their child's emotions(40%), rarely discussed action plans (55%), or collaborative resources (79%)when discussing the recent setback.